Magnetic recording disk drives store digital information by using a thin film inductive write head. The write head is patterned on the trailing surface of a slider that also has an air-bearing surface (ABS) to allow the slider to ride on a thin film of air above the surface of the rotating disk. The write head is an inductive head with a thin film electrical coil located between the poles of a magnetic yoke. When write current is applied to the coil, the pole tips provide a localized magnetic field across a gap that magnetizes the recording layer on the disk into one of two distinct magnetic states (binary data bits).
The magnetic material used as the recording layer on the disk is chosen to have sufficient coercivity that the magnetized data bits are written precisely and retain their magnetization state until written over by new data bits. The data bits are written in a sequence of magnetization states to store binary information in the drive, and the recorded information is read back with a read head that senses stray magnetic fields generated from the recorded data bits. Magnetoresistive (MR) read heads include those based on anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR), giant magnetoresistance (GMR), such as the spin-valve type of GMR head, and the more recently described magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) effect. Both the write and read heads are kept in close proximity to the disk surface by the slider's ABS, which is designed so that the slider “flies” over the disk surface as the disk rotates beneath the slider.
Disk drive areal data density (the number of bits that can be recorded on a unit surface area of the disk) is now approaching the point where the grains that define data bits are so small (about 8 nanometers across) that they can be demagnetized simply from thermal agitation within the magnetized bit (the so-called “superparamagnetic” effect). The conventional approach to circumventing this problem is to increase the magneto-crystalline anisotropy and coercivity of the magnetic material in the disk's recording layer to improve the thermal stability. This has required that the write head be made with materials having increasingly high saturation moments, thereby increasing the write field of the head so it can write on the high coercivity media. However, the saturation moment is limited by the available materials. Since coercivity is temperature dependent, one proposed solution is thermally-assisted magnetic recording (TAMR), in which the magnetic material in the recording media is locally heated during the writing process so that the coercivity is reduced enough for writing to occur—at room temperature the coercivity is high enough that the recorded bits are thermally stable.
Several approaches to TAMR have been proposed, including the use of a laser beam to heat the magnetic recording layer, as described in “Data Recording at Ultra High Density”, IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 39, No. 7, July 1996, p. 237; “Thermally-Assisted Magnetic Recording”, IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 40, No. 10, October 1997, p. 65; and IBM's U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,727. A read/write head for use in a TAMR system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,986,978, wherein a special optical channel is fabricated adjacent to the pole or within the gap of a write head for directing laser light (or heat) down the channel. However, these technologies are generally limited to a heated spot size in the recording medium on the order of a wavelength of the light source.
Some recent scientific developments have underscored the dramatic optical behavior of metallic structures when surface electromagnetic resonances are excited. It had been thought that optical transmission through sub-wavelength apertures was exceedingly small, varying as (d/λ)4 as first worked out theoretically by H. A. Bethe (“Theory of Diffraction by Small Holes”, The Physical Review, vol. 66 (7-8), pp. 163-182, October 1944). Ebbessen et al. have described the use of sub-wavelength aperture arrays in a metal film to excite surface plasmons and enhance light transmission through the apertures. (See, for example, European Patent Application EP 1 008 870 to Ebbesen et. al., “Enhanced optical transmission apparatus utilizing metal films having apertures and periodic surface topography”.) However, this work does not disclose structures useful for data recording. Other investigators have described the use of an aperture in a metal film on the face of a laser diode for producing a near-field optical spot for optical data recording. (See A. Partovi et al., “High-power laser light source for near-field optics and its application to high-density optical data storage”, Applied Physics Letters, vol. 75, pp. 1515-1517, 13 September 1999.) Although spot sizes of 250 nanometers were demonstrated, the absence of resonant structures is expected to result in relatively low transmission for smaller spot sizes. Other researchers have investigated transmission resonances in waveguides and their relationship to periodic boundary conditions and film thickness (see J. A. Porto et al., “Transmission resonances on metallic gratings with very narrow slits,” Physical Review Letters, vol. 83, no. 14, pp. 2845-2848, Oct. 4, 1999); still others have demonstrated that surface-enhanced transmission can be obtained from an individual aperture in a metal film in the presence of bumps or divots (see D. E. Grupp et al., “Beyond the Bethe Limit: Tunable enhanced light transmission through a single sub-wavelength aperture,” Adv. Mater., 1999, vol. 11, pp. 860-862). There is still a need for a high intensity light (or heat) source that can be directed to a very small region of a data recording layer.